While the cook got his meal ready, Karl closed his eyes and focused on what was happening in the strange spot in his mind. The result wasn’t words, but a somewhat detailed impression of the status of the bird. He had to translate it himself, but the actual information was pretty basic.
[Beast Space Activated] 1 occupant
[Pet Number 1]
[Name] Windspeed Hawk
[Rank] Common
[Connection] Low
[Skills]
[Claw] [Rend] [Super Vision]
Karl felt an indescribable power flow into his body as the status was completed, and a second round of physical impressions came to him.
[Beast Master] Karl
[Rank] Common
[Bloodline] Human
[Skills]
[Beast Skill] Super Vision
[Beast Attack Skill] Rend
That didn’t quite mesh with the knowledge that he had from the booklet. Wasn’t he supposed to get some sort of instinctive guideline on how to progress? Maybe a little something about how he was doing in his training of the skills?
“How does the power rating of the system work? Is there some sort of level, or grade, or something? How can we tell who has real power and who is like me, a newbie waiting on his skills?” He asked the two older men.
Older being a relative term, as they likely weren’t much more than twenty themselves, but older than him and finished their time at the Academy.
“That’s the fun part. You don’t. Unless they directly tell you, or you have some special skill to sense energy fluctuations like some of the mages, you just have to go with your gut instinct or the public rankings.
The problem with the Rankings is that they’re all subjective. You see, I’m a Wand Class Mage. I can use the Fire Element. If I was an Orb Class Mage, I could use two Elements at once, but that still doesn’t tell you anything about my power.
The important part is that I never made it past level one in my spell book, I just don’t have the talent for it. But the Druid here, he describes his powers entirely differently.”
The guard nodded. “I’m a level six mortal grade Druid. My grade has never changed, but I can use much more powerful nature magic than when I was starting school, and I can even transform into a bear.
Because everyone’s internal measurements are so wildly different, we judge everyone on the same scale as magical beasts. From Common to Mythical in Rank based on what they can defeat in battle, or how effective their healing and support skills are compared to beasts at the same level.
So, while the cook is still considered to be in the Common Grade, I have made it one rank up to the Awakened Grade, and I can fight awakened Magical Beasts on my own. At least in limited numbers I can. But I was near the bottom of my class, all the way through. My skills are varied, I can heal, fight, transform into a bear, even help plants grow, but I can’t do any of them worth a damn, so I’m stuck at the Awakened Grade.”
Karl nodded, understanding the concept if not the actual power level. Sometimes focusing on too many things would lead to you never getting good at anything. There was a guy like that in his neighbourhood, a jack of all trades. He could fix your car, your sink or your fridge, but only the common issues. If it were really broken, he would refer you to someone else.
“I think that I follow the idea. How powerful were the top students of your class?” He asked.
“Have you heard of the Archmage Mia, that new idol spell caster? She was in our class, and she reached the Awakened Rank in the first year, by the end of the second, she could defeat Ascended beasts with ease, and by the time we graduated, she was already a Commander Grade Mage.
Then only a few years after that, she got some super secret resource from a mission, and it pushed her to the Royal Rank. That’s when everyone started calling her the Arch Mage, and the fame started to get to her head. She doesn’t answer our messages anymore, but we can still proudly say we went to school with someone super famous.”
Royal Grade monsters were a terrifying thought to Karl. Even one of them could level the mining town he grew up in without breaking a sweat. The strongest fighting force in town was likely the Mayor, a Commander Grade Warrior, and in Karl’s opinion, he was getting too old to be picking fights with monsters. Plus, the town didn’t have any sort of armed guard, other than the handful of police.
If it came to a fight, the old Mayor would definitely not have a good time proving he still deserved his rank.
Karl sat in silence for a moment as he ate, then smiled at the two senior graduates in front of him.
“I suppose that I should get back to my room and see what I can do about awakening some sort of skill, then. If not, we will all be shut out of the class idol’s phone list in the future.”
The cook laughed. “I like the way you think, a bit of motivation goes a long way when you’re trying to find a reason to get through the most gruelling parts of your training.”
Karl thought a lot about that as he walked back to his room. The hardest part of any task was seeing it through to the end. It was easy at the start when you were motivated, but somewhere in the middle it became a dreadfully dull grind, with no reward in sight and very little progress to be made.
That was when you would lose sight of the goal and start to slack. If you were lucky, you recovered from it, but if not, you would end up in trouble and behind schedule. Even the Mine Foreman had said the same thing to the students when he came to talk to them on career day.
Not that anyone truly listened to him, with the prospect of the divine injection coming up only days later. But the others, the ones who returned to class afterwards, would be thinking more about it every day.
Once the door to the room closed behind him, Karl stared out the window and tried a skill for himself.
[Super Vision] grants the Beast Tamer the sight of the contracted Windspeed Hawk.
The forests in the distance were suddenly crystal clear in his eyes, and everything in his peripheral vision became just as clear as what was right in front of him. A bit of movement caught his eye, and Karl noticed a Quill beast moving through the grassland over a kilometre away.
It was incredible, and the world was so much more vivid, with colours that he didn’t even have names for. As he recalled, not only could the Windspeed Hawk see into the Ultraviolet and Infrared spectrums, but they were also accomplished nocturnal hunters, with excellent night vision as well.
While [Rend] was the much cooler combat skill, [Super Vision] was incredibly overpowered in Karl’s estimation. Just being able to see where you were going at night would give him a great advantage over other students in the practical tests.
Maybe the written tests as well. He could easily read other papers from across the room without moving his head or looking straight at them. Cheating on a written exam would be simple, if he weren’t already certain that none of the other students from the Mines were smart enough to cheat off.
